Catching my balance.

December 2010

31 December 2010

So. I was at the gym yesterday, a place I need to get to more often than I was able in 2010 (that goes on the list of things to try for in 2011) reading the New Yorker on the eliptical (while I was on the eliptical, not while the New Yorker was on the eliptical) and came across this article and thought wow.

27 December 2010

Last year I watched a few episodes of Dollhouse and was befuddled. I've liked most of Joss Whedon's work, and was especially fond of Firefly, but this.... I just couldn't get it. It was kind of silly, creepy imprinting stuff aside, and all the episodes I watched seemed like updated Charlie's Angels outtakes. Fluff, nothing more. So I watched a few, then stopped watching them and kind of forgot about the show.

Then we watched Battlestar Galactica (so, so good) and I remembered that I'd seen Helo in that Dollhouse thing that I had been befuddled by. One afternoon while I was trying to finish up something I watched the final episode of Dollhouse's first season-- Epitaph 1-- which I subsequently discovered never aired, and thought, whoa... now there's a Joss Whedon show.

I just finished watching the second (and final) season. The second season-- way more about the overarching conspiracy/mission than about the individual assignments as dolls (which was fluffy and silly)--- was much more interesting than the first season. Sadly, the ending-- the second epitaph-- was more like the ending for the first season than the second, ending with everyone getting their boo boos kissed and now all better. Sigh. The first epitaph is completely worth watching. The second, not so much.

I find it kind of interesting that Whedon is so enamoured of many of the people he's worked with. Echo (Faith from Buffy), Whiskey (Fred from Angel), the Senator (Wesley of Buffy/Angel), Bennett (River from Firefly), and Alpha (Wash from Firefly), among others. I also found the Battlestar Galactica/Dollhouse intercept kind of interesting-- Helo, Apollo, and Colonel Tigh. Not to mention the odd Cylon reference.

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Having a few days off for the holidays we actually watched not one but two movies in between house cleaning and project finishing.

I give this one a solid hurrumph. I'm usually a fan of classic movies, but this one niggled at my wrong-o-meter too much, and what with all there nuns there was so little in the way of awesome period clothing to distract me (me not being all up on my whimple styles through the ages). Apparently, according to the filmmakers, there are tropical monkey-filled jungles in the Himalayas, and everyone there is "childlike," quite possibly cannibalistic, and everybody rides Shetland ponies (which made everything much harder to take seriously).

We also watched Kontroll, which I loved, but Mr. P did not. Usually, we have similar feelings about movies, but this one we disagreed about. He thinks I was too influenced by the review I read of it (five years ago). I think it's just a good movie. I thought it was funny, the acting was good, they did a great job of creating an alternate universe where the ticket control people exist (In this world I'm king!). And it was just weird enough without being so out there that you were left thinking, what the hell was that?

With the semester over we even got to watch a movie last week. Exciting!

It's a movie I'd seen before, but it had been a long time, and it's a goooood movie. I think the last time I saw Mystery Train was maybe.... 1993? I think it's one of Jarmusch's best efforts. Mr. P particularly enjoyed the reparte between the Night Clerk and the Bellhop. You look like a mosquito-legged chimPANzeh.

25 December 2010

22 December 2010

The reason why the word satin is only one letter away from Satan is that satin is of the devil.

Glitter? Also of the devil.

Pretty much anything in the fabric store your five year old niece would think was awesome? Of. The. Devil.

Mr. P kind of summed it up when, upon returning home last night he said (and I quote), "Holy crap! There's glitter everywhere! It's on the cat! It looks like a five year old exploded in here!"

Indeed. There is glitter everywhere. The problem with glitter is that, while shiiiiiiny, it does a piss poor job of sticking to what it's been stuck to. Unless it's the cat.

But it is very shiny. And princess-y. Right?

Satin, I have now discovered, is a complete PitA to work with. IT SLIDES. It's slippery. EVEN WHEN PINNED.

On the upside, the only thing left is to get the zipper in. Attached to the slippery satin and glittering overskirt. But almost done. To my eye it looks huge. I used the size five pattern, so it should be her size. Except when I hold it up it looks like it should be for a twelve year old. Maybe she'll still be into princesses when she's twelve?

16 December 2010

The last few months have been craaazy round here... the repreive is going to be terribly short as I'll be back full bore (depending on the outcome of a couple of things) by mid January. I'm still futzing about on figuring out what to do about continuing on one path or another... some things will come clearer within the next week. On the upside, crawling out from under the weight of the last few weeks means a little more fun reading and even (gasp!) a movie.

We watched Little Dieter Needs to Fly, a documentary by Werner Herzog. I read a review a while ago of the subsequent fictionalized version of Dengler's escape, Rescue Dawn, which I kind of didn't find too interesting (and which I now see was sharply criticized by one of the Thai survivors of the escape for its distance from veracity), but the review mentioned the original documentary which sounded more intriguing. The documentary is pretty wacky. It skims over a lot of stuff, but does let Dengler speak on his own a fair amount... and he is an interesting character (to say the least). High point of the film: listening to Herzog's deadpan critique of the US Army preparedness films for soldiers going to Vietnam. Classic.

I also managed to finish a book I started aaaaaages ago-- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I started it months and months ago. But then I went to renew it and someone had put a hold on it so I returned it without finishing... But it's been nagging at me, so I got it back out from the library and finally finished it. Only to discover that it was better before I finished it. Which is to say that the ending... like the last eighty pages or so, are an eye rolling fail. To me, anyway. Of the, seriously?!?1? kind.I hate when that happens.

03 December 2010

Oh, wait, that and that I have discovered this website, which amuses me greatly and also helps me with answers for when I and working on concordant and discordant pairs and they refuse to concord and discord appropriately. Who knew that one day I would be amused by math. How I wish Miss Turner, who watched me flail about helplessly in high school Algebra II and told me she would pass me because it was clear that I was never going to understand any of it, could see me now.